Milan, Italy - A Milan appeals court on Tuesday upheld a four-and-a-half year prison sentence against British lawyer David Mills in a corruption case involving Italian Prime Minister Silvio BerlusconiBerlusconi was a co-defendant in the trial involving Mills, but the premier's case was frozen in 2008 after parliament - in which the governing conservatives enjoy a comfortable majority - passed a law granting immunity from prosecution to top officials, including the Prime Minister.
However, earlier this month Italy's Constitutional Court lifted the immunity, ruling that government's law violated Italy's constitution.
The decision has paved the way for a resumption of Berlusconi's trial, the date of which has yet to be announced.
Mills, a tax lawyer and estranged husband of British Olympics Secretary, Tessa Jowell, was in February convicted of taking a 600,000-dollar bribe in 1998 in exchange for withholding court testimony in two trials in which Berlusconi was a defendant.
Mills has denied any wrongdoing and his lawyers on Tuesday said he intends to appeal the latest verdict.
In Italy both defendants and prosecutors can lodge two appeals before verdicts and sentences become definitive.
"With this sentence one's faith in the rule of law is placed under sever stress," one of Mills' lawyers, Alessio Lanzi, was quoted a saying by the ANSA news agency following the appeals court's ruling.
Italian opposition leaders have repeatedly called on Berlusconi to resign after judges in May published their reasoning in sentencing Mills.
They judges said Mills had lied to protect Berlusconi's business interests when he gave testimony in two 1990s trials.
Media magnate-turned politician Berlusconi has repeatedly blamed his legal woes on what he says is the communist-inspired judiciary's political vendetta against him.
On November 16 a Milan court is scheduled to examine charges of tax fraud and false accounting against Berlusconi, in what is set to become the first trial involving the premier since the lifting of the immunity.
The charges stem from the acquisition of TV rights by Berlusconi's Mediaset company which, according to prosecutors, bought the rights at an inflated price from two offshore companies controlled by the premier.
